The game between Swansea and Aston Villa was played in a collective trance after the news of Gary Speed's death. Photograph: Neville Williams/Aston Villa via Getty Images

As the game struggled to come to terms with the news and circumstances of Gary Speed's death last Sunday, Gary Neville said that football was not important. At that moment even BSkyB, for whom the universe revolves around Ford Super Sunday, was probably inclined to agree.

Neville was simply getting his priorities right at a sad time. Yet his words must have struck a chord with those who believe that the importance of football is exaggerated by broadcasters, newspapers and, not least, the game itself. At a time of global economic crisis, with more job losses imminent and living standards in decline, surely the last thing anybody should be worrying about is whether a ball has crossed the line, a foul denied a player a scoring opportunity or a goal should have been disallowed.

There is no denying that football enjoys a far greater share of the attention than any other sport. Scandals in cricket and ructions in rugby may occupy centre stage for a short time but the tide of football coverage quickly returns. The game's financial problems are starting to take up as much space as events on the pitch while misty‑eyed moralists appear to be under the impression that football was meant to be played by nuns, who would probably kick several Hail Marys out of one another given the chance.

Surely football's importance lies in its relative unimportance. It offers a respite from reality. A gloom-laden news bulletin brightens up towards the end with a run-through of the day's goals. In the 70s John Arlott observed that all the cricket ever played was not worth one death in Vietnam. True, but there was no need to feel guilty about appreciating an exquisite cover drive.

Just so long as a sense of proportion is maintained. Sunday was one of those occasions when the football was so swiftly upstaged by tragedy that it was difficult to keep hold of events as they unfolded. The match between Swansea and Aston Villa was played in a collective trance.

While the occasions are hardly comparable the mind's eye did go back to Hillsborough in 1989. One moment all that mattered was that a shot from Liverpool's Peter Beardsley had thwacked against the Nottingham Forest crossbar in the opening minutes of an FA Cup semi-final, the next a policeman was running towards the referee to tell him that people were dying in a crush behind the goal at the other end of the ground.

Provided football remembers its place it will always offer a relief from the troubles, traumas and at times the sheer monotony of everyday life. Professional football as an entertainment originally gave workers a cheap Saturday afternoon's break from pit, shipyard and factory. "It is not just a sport people take to, like cricket or tennis or running long distances," wrote Arthur Hopcraft in The Football Man. "It is inherent in the people. It is built into the urban psyche, as much a common experience to our children as are uncles and school. It is not a phenomenon; it is an everyday matter. There is more eccentricity in deliberately disregarding it than in devoting a life to it."

Watching football, as JB Priestley put it in The Good Companions, "turned you into a member of a new community … having pushed your way through a turnstile into another more splendid kind of life …" This surely still applies even if the cost of pushing one's way through a turnstile is now beyond the reach of many fans. The brief escapism that football provides is as strong as ever and at times of crisis becomes ever more precious.

When the second world war broke out in 1939 league football was banned because large crowds would be vulnerable targets for enemy bombers, but an emergency league with restricted attendances was allowed for the duration. Football was good for morale. German fans were able to watch international matches, albeit with a limited choice of opponents, until 1943 when the demands on manpower, particularly on the Russian front, made this impracticable.

Football matters precisely because it does not matter that much. And for all the concern about the influence of sheikhs and oligarchs on the competitiveness of the Premier League, the follies of Fifa, Sepp Blatter's latest howler and any club daft enough to sign Carlos Tevez it will continue to hold much of the nation's attention.